Altmetrics (the “alt” is for alternative) are article-level metrics for scholarly and scientific publications, which may be complementary to measures like Citation Index (CI). Where CI measures use by scientist and academicians, it ignores an article’s impact on the broader society, main stream and electronic media. Altmetrics measure the impact (and popularity) of individual articles by considering not only attention by scientists, but also by news outlets, social media (e.g., Twitter and Facebook), science blogs, mentions in Wikipedia, Google+, and others.

The new Altmetric badge (or “donut”) for individual articles at the Journal of Wildlife Diseases web page represents data collected and made available through Altmetric.com. The badge provides access to the Altmetric details page for each article. For a colorful example, see the Jobbins and Alexander article in the October 2015 issue:

Click in the center of the donut to the right of the article and explore the information provided.

Keep in mind that if an article has not received attention yet, the badge will not appear. Also, the newest articles are not likely to show much attention, so check them later. Finally, you have to look at the “abstract” or “full text” page, the donut will not appear with the PDF.